


vouchsafe

by sagemb



Series: college applications: the biggest meme [1]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017)
Genre: Americanisms, Domestic Bliss, Gen, Multimedia, Tony being a drama queen, Writer's Block, college recommendation letters, family man tony stark, or so it may seem, this is pretty much crackfic, writing a letter of recommendation is harder than it looks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-22
Updated: 2018-12-22
Packaged: 2019-09-24 22:26:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,872
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17109284
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sagemb/pseuds/sagemb
Summary: Tony covered his face with both hands and screamed very gently. “Can I just bribe the school to let Peter in?"





	vouchsafe

_Dear Place Where I Spent Three of my Teenage Years Drunk (and Occasionally High) Off My Ass but Still Managed to Pass All of My Classes,_

 

_Peter’s a great kid. You’ll love him._

 

_Peace,_

_Tony FREAKIN Stark_  
_Owner, Stark Industries  
_ _Iron Man, Avengers Initiative_

 

Tony covered his face with both hands and screamed very gently. “Can I just bribe all of his schools to let him in?”

“I forbid you,” Pepper told him sweetly. “Your recommendation letter will help Peter more than throwing money at every single school he applies to will. Just do your best and be honest. He needs this from you.”

“Fuck, I’m not a writer.”

“You aren’t. But you know this kid.”

“I regret meeting him.”

“The lies that come out of your mouth are insane,” Pepper said, kissed him, and left for the office.

“I’m gonna do it!” Tony declared to the empty room. “I’ll do it, I can do this. It’s gonna be the best rec letter in the history of rec letters. I got this.”

 

* * *

 

_Dear Admissions Committee,_

 

_It is my pleasure to recommend Peter, who is my personal intern. In the three years I’ve known him, he’s become not only a_

~~_uhhhhhhhhhhhhfffffffbbbllllppphh blllllllllaaah blahhhhhhhhhhh blah_ ~~

_The first time I met Peter, it was to personally offer him a September Foundation grant. He was carrying parts of dismantled CD players, radios, and computers scattered all over his desk. When I asked him where he got them, he told me that he’d found everything he had to work with from dumpster-diving._

_stuff stuff stuff Peter is a good kid who works hard and is kind to people_

_I remember the first time I realized that I honestly, truly wanted kids was when I watched Peter rebuild a car engine. Now my wife and I are a few months off from the birth of our first child. Helping Peter get into college is an inadequate way to thank him for all the ways he’s changed my life._

~~_this is disgusting i want to vomit_ ~~

_In my time as Iron Man, I’ve come to appreciate people who are driven by an infallible moral compass and by their compassion for others. It’s rare to find people that good. Peter’s one of them_

~~_FRIDAY HELP_ ~~

~~_ >>>Yes boss. How may I be of assistance? _ ~~

~~_i didn’t mean it go away_ ~~

~~_I hired Peter as my personal intern due to his exceptional September Foundation application. He was fourteen, the main parental figure in his life had passed away six months previously, and he was obsessed with reverse-engineering Spider-Man’s webs._ ~~

~~_wow that does not paint a pretty picture_ ~~

 

* * *

 

“How was your day?” he asks Pepper over dinner.

“Well, the pregnancy tech line’s ready for the market,” she says, smiling, resting a hand on her rounded belly.

“Finally! I told R&D that we didn’t need that many test trials, I’d never test anything dangerous on you. Or the baby.”

“Tony, I’ve been injected with EXTREMIS. Twice. What isn’t dangerous to me might be dangerous to other people.”

“Oh, come on, these are breast pumps and—and fetus vital monitors, they’re not gonna _irradiate_ the baby or rewrite your DNA—”

“There’s an ethical component in this! I know you know this, honey.”

“But you know how much I love playing mad scientist,” Tony tells her plaintively, which makes her laugh.

“How’s Peter’s letter of rec going?”

“If I double MIT’s annual endowment, they gotta let him in, right?”

“No.”

“Can I hire a ghostwriter?”

“Honey, you’re too old to be a diva.”

“Ta-Nehisi Coates. I think he’d be a good fit, he knows how to write that touchy-feely bullshit. You think he’d say yes if I paid him enough?”

Pepper purses her lips at him. “If you can write wedding vows that made eighty percent of our friends cry, then you can write a strong recommendation letter for Peter.”

“You know what? I miss the days when I was dying of palladium poisoning. I wasn't bound by any obligations then. I was just... free to live out the chaotic remainder of my shitty life in peace."

“I’ll divorce you if you ever say that again.”

 

* * *

 

_Dear Admissions Committee,_

 

_It is my pleasure to recommend Peter, who was an usher at my wedding. Outside of that, he’s my intern/bizarre teenage ward (his aunt and I share partial custody, but it’s more of a de facto kind of thing, so don’t ask a lawyer to corroborate.) Before that, he was a fourteen-year-old building computers and DVD players and reverse-engineering Spider-Man’s webs in his bedroom._

_I could say that, at age fourteen, Peter Parker was the youngest successful applicant for a September Foundation grant, but that would be lying. After I read his (ridiculously impressive) proposal and resume, I immediately rejected his application, then contacted and hired him on the spot._

“Wow, this isn’t terrible,” Tony said to himself, reading it over. Then he fell asleep and woke up to find himself inflicted with such debilitating block that he couldn’t write a single decent sentence.

 

* * *

 

 _asdfjkl;_ , Tony typed. _asdfjkl;asdjfkl;asdjfkl;asdfjkl;AWEIUFBALWIEFBALKSJDBFLAJWBEF IJAWEJFAJWEBFAJBWEFKJABWKJDFEBAKLSJBDFLKAWEGBFIAJWBEFKAJBWLNEIFJBAKSJDBFLKAJSBLSLDBAFJSBDFKJABSDLKFJABLKEJFBAKJBEFALKJSEBFAKLJSBDFKLJABSDLFKJABSLDKFJ!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!????????????????????????????????_

 

* * *

 

StarkNet History

Today - Saturday, August 11th, 2018

10:04 AM _how to write_ www.google.com

10:05 AM _college recommendation letter examples_ www.google.com

10:09 AM _cool respectable fonts_ www.google.com

10:10 AM _non alcoholic vodka_ www.google.com

 

* * *

 

“What if I didn’t write you a letter of rec?” Tony asks. “I could just schedule a lunch with you, me, and the MIT Dean of Admissions.”

“That’s, like, cheating,” Peter points out.

“And asking Tony Stark to write a letter of recommendation isn’t? Kid, we might be playing by the rules here, but this is by no means fair to any other applicant. You’re just too massively awesome for any semblance of fairness to exist.”

“Stop.”

“Come on, don’t be modest.”

“Not _every_ school is gonna want me. You can’t wine and dine every admissions officer. And you know those schools that reject you because you’re too good and they know that even if they accept you, you won’t go?”

“Ooh, you’ve got an ego on you.”

“But you know what I mean!” Peter’s blushing.

“Yeah, of course. But once you get into MIT early action, none of the other schools will matter anymore.”

“Yeah, but—” Peter sighs. “I want… security. My ego’s not so high that I think I’ll get into MIT 100%.”

“It should be,” says Tony. “So you’ve got safety schools. And mid-tier options. And other options in general. Right?”

“Yeah.”

“Like what?”

“Uh, a couple SUNY schools and a bunch of technological universities. Like RIT, RPI, WPI… and then there’s also, like. NYU Tandon and Columbia and Yale and Princeton, uh.” Peter’s expression is turning guilty.

“And Harvard. And… let me guess. CalTech. Fucking CalTech.”

“It’s one of the best engineering schools in the world! I’m just keeping my options open,” Peter insists.

“There are a million other options! You know, Stark California hires out of CalTech so damn much and it pisses me off. That’s the one thing I hate about the West Coast. CalTech’s just a knockoff of MIT, face it.”

“If you send your rec letter to every school on my list except CalTech and Harvard, I’ll web you to a dumpster.”

“Help,” Tony says. “Threats. Verbal assault. Unniceness.”

“Your face is unnice,” says Peter.

 

* * *

 

“Friday!” Tony bellows. “Dictate note. _Dear Admissions Committee, Peter Parker is a really good fake-intern-turned-real-intern. He’s also a really good proto-son. He’s really, really good. Like absurdly good. At things but also in general_ — fuck! Come on, brain, don’t suck. Friday, delete.”

 

* * *

 

_Dear Admissions Committee,_

 

_Peter Parker is Spider-Man. That’s right, this isn’t a letter of recommendation, it’s an exposé. Wait no nevermind Friday delete delete note no stop why are you still dictating I told you to_

 

* * *

 

[9:18 PM]

Tony: _I want you to know that I care about you a lot_

Peter: _are you having a crisis again. i literally gave you a list of bullet points on what I want you to write_

Peter: _look you know me right? just write all the reasons why you like me_

Tony: _But I don’t like you_

Peter: _:(_

 

* * *

 

A month later, in a diner, Tony slides an office envelope across the table to Peter. “Here you go.”

“What—oh, my rec letter.” Peter takes it and stuffs it into his backpack. “Thanks, Tony. Really. It means a lot to me.”

“Aren’t you going to read it?”

Peter frowns. “Do you want me to?”

“I didn’t agonize over this for the entire summer for nothing,” Tony says.

“I don’t know, most teachers say they’ll only write one for you if you don’t ask to read it before they submit it,” Peter says, pulling the envelope out again and taking out the single piece of paper inside.

There is silence. Tony watches Peter make at least twelve different facial expressions, five of which clearly show the stages of grief. _Denial_ all the way to _acceptance_ in the span of ten seconds. Tony is impressed.

But then Peter’s face turns funny, and it looks like he might actually _cry_. Oh shit. This is not good.

“I’m kidding, got ya,” Tony says quickly. “I uploaded the real thing to your Common App already.”

“Oh,” says Peter, his voice faint. “Oh, oh good. Okay.”

“I’ll email it to you if you want.”

“That would be great, thanks,” Peter says in the same _I-might-die-if-you-push-me-too-hard_ tone.

And then he starts laughing and doesn’t stop.

Tony has fucked up. He’s traumatized a child. May is going to kill him. Pepper is going to kill him, and then divorce him, and legally kick his ass so hard that he’ll never even get to meet baby Morgan. He will never forgive himself.

“Kid?” he asks. “Kid? Are—are you okay?”

Peter isn’t even making noise anymore, aside from the creaking sounds from how he’s shaking their rickety wooden table. There are tears coming out of his eyes. He might be having some kind of laughter-induced seizure.

“Can—can I get you a smoothie or something?” Tony begs. “Anything?”

“Mr. Stark,” Peter wheezes. “Oh my God, this is _terrible_.”

He holds out the sheet Tony printed out that morning. The edge of it catches on a condensation ring on the table, wrinkling the paper precisely where a picture of Tony’s face is.

 

 

“Okay,” says Tony, terrified that he’s going to spontaneously combust and burn to death just so he can be dragged down to hell.

“I can’t wait to show Ned.”

Peter is calming down now. He is wiping the tears from his eyes. Oh. Okay. Tony is no longer relegated to eternal damnation. Or maybe he still is, but not for this. Okay. Good.

 

* * *

 

[7:23 PM]

May: _Peter just read your recommendation letter. He’s crying now._

Tony: _Why does this keep happening I didn’t mean it I swear_

May: _?_

May: _It’s a good thing. He’s smiling like crazy and he just whispered “I love this man so much I can’t believe I mean so much to him”_

May: _Thank you for this, Tony_

[7:27 PM]

May: _Tony?_

Tony: _gotta go drink bleach so I can be a real man again bye May_

**Author's Note:**

> If the embedded image of Tony's joke letter isn't showing up, it can be viewed here: https://ibb.co/pnx9smr
> 
> I blame ciaconnaa for this. I thought it would be meaningful if Tony wrote Peter a college rec letter, so I tried to imagine what kinds of things Tony would put in it. Only I could never write a full, finished, halfway decent version of that letter, so ciaconnaa was like, "Why don't you just have a fic that's all the mess-up letters?"
> 
> For those who are unfamiliar with the way that college applications work in the US: your application consists of your high school academic transcript, your SAT/ACT scores, your AP scores, your extracurriculars and job history, the awards you’ve received, letters of recommendation from your teacher/coach/employer, your application essays, and portfolio work (if you’re a visual artist or musician etc). Plus an optional interview with an alum of the college to which you’re applying. All of these materials are put in front of an admissions committee, who review your application holistically and decide whether they think you’re a good fit for the college. It's a very elaborate, subjective process. Having family/alumni connections gives you a major advantage.


End file.
